Field
The disclosed embodiments generally relate to the design of automated systems for recognizing sounds. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to the design of an automated system that uses an inferential technique to recognize non-speech sounds based on patterns of sound primitives.
Related Art
Recent advances in computing technology are making it possible for computer systems to automatically recognize sounds, such as the sound of a gunshot, or the sound of a baby crying. This has led to the development of automated systems for detecting corresponding events, such as gunshot-detection systems and baby-monitoring systems. However, these existing systems are presently unable to detect higher-level events that are associated with collections of related sounds. For example, the sound of a baby crying followed by the sound of a human voice and then silence might indicate that a person has taken care of a crying baby. Detecting such higher-level events is a complicated task because the related sounds might occur in different sequences or at the same time.
Hence, what is needed is a system for detecting higher-level events that are associated with patterns of related sounds.